Zigzag
by Mrs. HopeEstheim
Summary: No matter what path in life you choose, don't you have to take it in steps? And sometimes you have to take a detour before you can get back on track. So, in effect, all of life's paths and choices were a zigzag. GaLe one-shot, slightly drabble-ish.


Levy paused in the book she was reading, looking out across the noisy guild as Natsu started a fight with Gray. She winced when they smashed Erza's cake and she joined in, but by that time they'd already busted a table in half by throwing it at the back of Gajeel's head, and he had immediately joined in. The four people fighting quickly–albeit accidentally–pulled more of the guild members into the fray by hitting them, running into them, or just plain annoying them with the noise. The solid script mage looked on curiously, refraining from joining in like she usually did.

She was just getting ready to turn back to reading when she noticed that the path leading from where she sat to the door of the guild was in a zigzag shape, and a stray thought crossed her mind.

_Isn't every path in life like a zigzag?_

The blue-haired bookworm blinked at the absurdity of the thought, but after a few seconds of pondering it she realized that it was kind of true. No matter what path in life you choose, don't you have to take it in steps? And sometimes you have to take a detour before you can get back on track. So, in effect, all of life's paths and choices were a zigzag.

For some reason, that one stray thought intrigued Levy McGarden to no end.

Practically in a trance, she tucked her bookmark firmly between the pages of the novel and tucked it into her little bag. Once assured that it was safe, she said a quick excuse to Lucy and Mira and slipped off of her stool. The zigzag she'd spotted, the path to the door, was still there and so she followed it. Even as she did so, a table was thrown in her way so that she had to detour around it–her theory had just been further proved, hadn't it?

Levy had left the guild to do a little bit of thinking after that little realization, though. It had caused her to finally accept that it wasn't so wrong to have the feelings she did for _him_. Just because it had all started out rather rough for the two of them didn't mean that it was wrong for her to like him. It made it kind of strange that she did, but she had just zigzagged through life until she'd come to this point, right? Since everything, she reassured herself with a nod, was a zigzag.

"I would have ended up at this point anyway, right?" she asked herself, pausing as she crossed over the canal, staring down at the flowing blue water. "Yeah. I would have. I just needed to get through all those detours, but I wound up at the same place."

Her thoughts were going in circles–or, rather, in _zigzags_, she corrected herself–but she didn't care that she was revisiting the same thoughts over again. It just gave her more opportunities to reason with herself and to assure herself that her idea was correct.

_Even walking from the guild to Fairy Hills is a zigzag!_ she told herself, stretching her arms above her head gleefully, doing a playful little pirouette in the middle of the bridge. She didn't really care who saw, because she was a member of Fairy Tail and everyone was used to their strange actions by this point in time. And she couldn't help it; Levy was just so excited. It was usually Lucy who came up with these obscure little realizations, but finally it had been Levy. The blue-haired girl smiled down at the running water, then up at the blue sky, before turning and continuing to walk and sort through her thoughts.

"I tried to confess once," she recalled, holding a single pointer finger up as she remembered the fact and as if she was explaining it to someone. "But I ended up doing a whole bunch of roundabout things instead. _Zigzagging_ around the point!"

She clapped her hands excitedly.

"Everything _is_ a zigzag!"

"What the hell are you going on about, Bookworm?"

Levy let out a high-pitched squeal at the unexpected voice that came from behind her and she spun on her heel to find the intimidating iron dragonslayer, looking a little beat up, standing there with his hands in his pockets. It would have looked casual if it hadn't been for the bruises and scorch marks that made the solid script mage giggle. He raised a pierced eyebrow at her.

"Sorry, it's nothing really!" she said, smiling brightly at him. A flush spread slowly across her cheeks as her crush, Gajeel Redfox, just looked at her as if she had grown an extra head or two. She sighed and then said, "Do you really want to know?"

"You sounded like you'd gone crazy, mumbling about zigzags."

The stoic answer made her grin a little.

"Because everything in life _is_ a zigzag!" she threw her hands up, smiling like a fool. Then she said, "Don't you see? It doesn't matter if you've already chosen what to do or where to go–something will always get in the way. You'll still get to your goal eventually, but you'll have to take some detours first! Then you have to get back on the right path, but something else will interfere, so you'll have to go around that, too. So aren't you basically zigzagging through life when you do that?"

"I guess," he rolled his shoulders and she let out a happy giggle.

"Say that you decided to confess to someone," she held up her finger in that lecturing manner she'd used on herself just moments earlier. The excited girl didn't even realize she was about to describe her own situation with him _to_ him. "And so you worked up the courage to confess, but someone made you go out on a job with them, so you had to wait! And then when you got back, the person you were going to confess to was gone. That's an obstacle, isn't it? And say that you lose your nerve by the time they got back! You have to find away around _that_, too. And when you finally get the nerve up again, you go up to talk to them, but all the sudden you _don't know what to say_! Another detour! And then–"

A strangled little squeak sounded in the back of her throat. She hadn't even seen him move, so intent on describing her theory to him that she completely missed it. But his hand had fallen on her shoulder and he'd yanked her forward and by the time she'd realized all of this he'd stolen her first kiss and was _still_ stealing it. She went weak at the knees.

"Jeez, I got it the first time," he said, looking annoyed with how much she'd been talking, though she knew he wasn't really mad at her at all. "But you sure did _zigzag_ a lot to confess to me like that."

Her face lit up. Levy was surprised he'd noticed that she was talking about him. She was surprised that he had even realized that she liked him in the first place, because she thought she'd been hiding it well.

"I…but…uh…"

The blue-haired girl's cheeks burned and she struggled to find the words for a coherent sentence but failed.

The iron dragonslayer rolled his eyes and just roughly kissed her again. It took her by surprise again and she didn't know what to do at all. This side of Gajeel was just so different from the Gajeel she was used to, and she didn't know how to deal with him. It was so new to her, but she couldn't deny that she liked it. Levy knew she could get used to it.

Maybe it would just take some more zigzagging around?

* * *

><p><strong>My second GaLe fic. I think it's kind of…Meh. But it was fun to write. <strong>

**Fun Fact: the inspiration for this fanfic was my 'Manage Stories' tab. I was looking down through them and realized that I didn't have a fic that started with a Z and the first z word to pop into my head was 'zigzag' and BAM. Fic. It was going to be NaLu, but I felt like GaLe tonight.**

**Hope you liked it, even if it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. XD**


End file.
